Hands and Voices Choir
Accessible Arts <
The Melbourne Centre

Accessible Arts
The organisation was set up in 1992 as the local branch of the Artlink ExChange and became independent in 1996. Like Cube Media, Accessible Arts is a Company Limited by Guarantee with Charitable Status. Our aim is to make the arts more accessible, whilst at the same time extending boundaries and challenging stereotypes. We are a user led organisation working with local under represented groups and less confident users of the arts, prioritising those with learning and associated disabilities.

Our vision is to raise the profile of art and disability through quality entertainment, pioneering new training models that enable our members with learning difficulties to lead workshops, as well as ensuring we can change current perceptions of disability, making may for social change.

Our Patron is Alan Hacker, OBE, the internationally renowned clarinettist and conductor. As a disabled person himself, he has inspired and encouraged us
along the way. At the moment the Hands & Voices Choir is our main project, although we have run a wide range of arts projects over the years (anything from line dancing to large mural projects).

More recently we have been working hard to make everything about our organisation fully accessible, by the use of signs & symbols, as well as trying to use simple language at all times. We have just finished writing an accessible version of our governing document ‘Accessible Arts Internal Rules’ so that our members with learning difficulties can understand.

In 2005 Accessible Arts relocated to the Melbourne Centre, alongside Cube Media and they have managed to turn the centre into York’s first fully integrated Community Centre. Accessible Arts is the lead partner on the Melbourne Partnership Group, which has been set up to develop the Centre in the future, including representatives from the City of York Council, both local Primary Schools (Fishergate and St. George’s), user groups of the building and other local partners.

Supported by:
The City of York Council,
Rix, Thompson and Rotherburg Foundation, D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust,
Lloyds TSB Foundation, Joseph Rowntree Foundation (York Applications),
The Key Fund, Donald and Patricia Shepherd Charitable Trust,
York Common Good Fund, Purey Cust Trust and The Norman Collinson Trust.